World

The U.S. defense chief urged Ukraine’s allies to “move at the speed of war” to get more and heavier weapons to Kyiv as Russian forces rained fire on eastern and southern Ukraine amid new fears that the fighting could spill over the country’s borders.

Polish and Bulgarian leaders accused Moscow of using natural gas to blackmail their countries after Russia’s state-controlled energy company stopped supplying them with gas Wednesday. European Union leaders echoed those comments and were holding an emergency meeting on the Russian move.

Cyberattacks by state-backed Russian hackers have destroyed data across dozens of organizations in Ukraine and produced “a chaotic information environment,” Microsoft says in a report released Wednesday.

Russia’s top diplomat warned Ukraine against provoking World War III and said the threat of a nuclear conflict “should not be underestimated” as his country unleashed attacks against rail and fuel installations far from the front lines of Moscow’s new eastern offensive.

President Joe Biden on Tuesday said Russia’s war in Ukraine amounted to “genocide,” accusing President Vladimir Putin of trying to “wipe out the idea of even being a Ukrainian.”